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Last night I got access to a digitized film reel from 1969 that shows off a computer artillery game called Potshot. And to explain why that’s a big deal, I need to talk about Dartmouth and the BASIC computer language.

In 1963-64, university faculty John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, a time-share system notable for its speedy responses and accessibility for students and staff alike.

Luehrmann developed Potshot as an educational tool to show his physics students about gravity and velocity in an entertaining way. You can learn more through my interview with him from a few years ago: www.atariarchive.org/an-interview...

He developed two different versions of Potshot: a terrestrial one where players take turns shooting at each other over a mountain, and an orbital version that places the cannons in space.

The former was written up in People’s Computer Company in 1973, and that seems to have catalyzed the “artillery genre,” effectively making Potshot the progenitor! Games such as Artillery Duel, Scorched Earth, Gorillas.bas and Worms all trace their lineage back to Potshot.